April 3, 2017 - Glowing Jewels in the Galactic Plane

Glowing Jewels in the Galactic Plane The majority of the stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way, reside in a single huge disk, known as the Galactic Plane, spanning 100,000 light-years across. The Sun also resides in this crowded stellar disk, lying roughly halfway between the galaxy’s center and its outer edges. This disk is filled with a diffuse mixture of gas and dust—the interstellar medium—that pervades space, filling the large gaps found between stars. Occasionally, these clouds of gas and dust cool, becoming denser and denser until they spark star formation, giving rise to new generations of stars. This image from the Herschel Space Observatory shows the sky in infrared light, with warmer star birth regions appearing violet and green, and colder surrounding material appearing red.